


I've Forgotten How It Felt Before the World Fell at Our Feet

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (it has a happy ending seriously), Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, F/M, Hades!Clarke, Hades/Persephone - Freeform, Persephone!Bellamy, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5158322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the bringer of spring and she the bringer of death, but darkness always attracts light and they may be gods but their love bleeds just as raw as human. </p><p>Persephone/Hades modern(ish) AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Forgotten How It Felt Before the World Fell at Our Feet

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to [alltheworldsinmyhead](http://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheworldsinmyhead) who wanted to see my take on Persephone/Hades!Bellarke. Preferably modern. Well, babe, the emphasis in not placed on modern setting but I hope you like it anyways. In any case, I loved writing it and thank you for the idea. :)
> 
> The titles is from Adele's Hello because let's just not pretend that we didn't listen to it and squeal over the queen returning to the scene.
> 
> Alright. Thank you and happy reading!

He smells like sun and hot summer rain and she thinks she has been in the Underworld for far too long.

Boys like him – because Persephone is always a boy or a girl, never someone who had seen enough pain to ripen – never love women like her, because she is always a woman burdened by the weight of her acts, or she is always a man who had done terrible things.

In this life, her Persephone is a boy, a sweet summer child with dimples that bring spring after a long winter and a smile that could light up every dark crevice of her kingdom. And in this life, like in any other, he steals glances at her because she is dark and deep, another mystery to crack, but she is the queen of Underworld and he couldn’t live without the light.

Still, she plays into it – fools herself into thinking that maybe this time it will be different. Maybe this time she won’t become a fool for someone who couldn’t possibly love her, someone who would sneak behind her back and grin when she cries out, seeing the blood red pomegranate juice trickling down their chin.

It was always about spite, for Persephone. It was always about belonging, for Hades. In this life, they are Bellamy and Clarke, different names, different faces – all for the same thing. It begins like a romance and it ends a tragedy.

You cannot love someone and watch them kept in a cage, forever longing to return home. Dark castles are not home to those who have roamed free all their lives, uncontained and unrestricted. Dark castles are home to those who do not feel like they belong anywhere else because they have done so many things they are not proud of that they outnumber the good ones.

Rejects, underdogs, grimacing faces with bodies lit up in pain. Clarke knows the cadence of everyone’s screams and she loves them like you can only love broken things – you must become one yourself.

She doesn’t know what came first – the act that made her soul darken, or the screams she wanted to understand. There is pain and there is terror but most days, there is nothing but pitch-black darkness that became a home.

Underworld is no longer trapped between Earth and Tartarus. Underworld is a seedy nightclub with a dance floor for writhing, sweating bodies, their hips gyrating and grinding against one another in search for a quick comfort. Elysian Plains are private rooms, all velvet and thick curtains separating the noble ones from all the other mortals looking to redeem themselves with a quick fuck or a whispered kind word.

Underworld is not what anyone would imagine but times change. Even the gods’ faces changed. Zeus is a woman with stormy gray eyes, Hera is a man who dies every day again and again so he could keep his wife’s pride intact. Who they are never changes, but at least their looks fool them into thinking they could.

Clarke remembers her old name – Hades – as a bitter reminder of what she had been when the humanity knew of nothing but wars and endless slaughter. Her heart was breaking whenever a new soul arrived but now there is nothing – and if there is nothing, nothing can be broken.

She watches over her club, a queen on her throne, with blank expression on her face. There are some gods who come here, looking for fun among those who want to join a better plane of life after life, and she knows them – Finn, Aphrodite, always so silly and petty in his attempts to spread love and beauty. All he does is pillage hearts and tear people and gods’ ribcages open.

Still, he sits in her club and Clarke says nothing. Raven – who was once Hephaestus – but is now a woman more beautiful than anything Clarke had ever seen, stiffens next to her.

“Millennia and I still hate him.”

“Finn?”

“Yes, fucking Finn.”

Raven is different and maybe that is exactly why she gets along with Clarke. The two of them never had a place on Olympus. Oh, they had their thrones but they never were invited to sit on them. So they did what they did best – took care of this world. Raven invented electricity and her cheers could be heard all over the world, and then she invented the atomic bomb and the rains flooded the earth as she wept.

They both loved Finn, though. No one could not love him. But it was a trick of light, only a glimmer in his eyes that showed you what could have been – you could be loved, you could be accepted, Clarke. No longer the dark ruler of those no one wants to speak of, but a true goddess – a queen with crown of gold.

Her crown of ash, dust and thorns always felt like a mockery, but it was her mockery. No one could give her the light and she would not ask for it.

“And who the hell is he?”

Raven is all sharp smiles and fire crackling in her eyes – sometimes, when they go black with lust uncontained, Clarke sees the flames. They are outcasts, no good to the shiny gods on the mountain. They only have each other to love.

Clarke follows Raven’s gaze to where a boy is sitting. His locks are dark and unruly, all over the place, brushing his shoulders, caressing his cheeks, and something about him makes Clarke _want_ him. Then she sees his bronze skin, always hot to touch like when you’ve been standing in the sunlight for too long and your skin absorbs the heat, and the way he smirks when he sees her looking and she _knows_.

“Persephone. Well – Bellamy.”

Raven eyes her warily, nursing her glass of whiskey and then stands up. Her brace is still attached to her leg and she curses it most of the days but Clarke knows that she is glad to be able to walk. You could not contain the fire that was Raven. You could push her down to the ground, stomp over her, break her heart and shatter her bones, but you could never take her soul.

“I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

“Raven,” Clarke hisses. “Don’t you _dare_.”

The goddess only chuckles, limping away into the crowd which parts for her instinctively. Yes, Raven has the whole world on her palm and she would have been better fit for a total ruler than Zeus. But she is a dark horse and no one cares about those until they defeat you.

Clarke observes Bellamy and she is tired of this game they play in every reincarnation. He comes to find her, begs her to take him in when she is already tired and the sheets are tangled and wet with their sweat, and she agrees. How can she not agree when he gives her what she craves for?

She is not human but gods aren’t any stronger.

He laughs victoriously when she slides into his booth but she doesn’t give him the chance to speak. If he speaks, she will be long gone and there won’t be any reason separating her from what will be their demise. Every time he makes her fall in love when all he wants is danger.

“Leave.”

“Why should I?” he asks, petulant.

It doesn’t surprise her anymore and she lets out an exasperated sigh. His jaw is always slightly raised, his hands crossed and his eyes stormy – as if something reminiscing a home that much could ever be anything but warm and safe. He always dares her to make him leave and she never can.

“Aren’t you tired of this? Always coming to find me, always making me take you in, always defying logic so you could have your way?”

He isn’t shocked because none of them could ever be shocked anymore. The game is ingrained into their bones and they just follow their predestined paths. In the end, both of them end up hurt.

Bellamy is the blooming flowers in open fields, clear air on top of the mountain and bubbly laughter bursting from your lips.

Clarke is the moment alcohol spills over the counter, black mascara tracks streaming down your cheeks and the feeling of having nothing to lose because all has been lost.

They never go together.

But they always want to try again.

“You never trust me, Clarke. You never trust me when I say that I want to be with you. And that’s why I come to find you, every single time. That’s why I’ll keep finding you.”

“I don’t want you to. The truth is simple – I don’t love you and you don’t love me. We just do what we’ve been taught to do. Find each other, fall in love, break your heart and live in captivity.”

She doesn’t want him to live in captivity, even if it means she can see him every day. She would be happier never seeing him but knowing that he was free, four seasons in a year, rather than having to confine him where he is nothing short of miserable for two.

He is an untamed horse and it feels wrong to try and rein him in every time.

“We have to try.”

His voice breaks her because his voice is everything she can’t have. How is it possible to think of children laughing and wind rustling the wheat if she’d never seen it? How is it possible that only by setting her eyes on him she wants to believe desperately that she is allowed to be happy?

“Why?”

“Because I love you. And you love me. There is nothing else.”

And like a children’s nursery rhyme, light is always attracted to darkness and love is always attracted to hate. But he is happiness and she is misery, and once she would have been brave enough to withstand seeing the look of his heart breaking on his face but now she is old.

“There is so much more for you, Bellamy. And I won’t be the one to take that away from you.”

Clarke leaves and moving away from him feels like Earth being torn from its axis and floating in empty space. If she is Earth and he is her axis, then their revolution never bore any fruit and the sun keeps shining but it never touches the both of them.

 

* * *

 

 

Oh, he is cruel, and in a way that only those who are kind can be.

He taunts her with sweet words coming her way, pushing through the mind-numbing basses and orgasmic shouts coming from the bathrooms. There are words of love, words of lust, enough darkness and light to create something beautiful her fingertips ache to touch.

She always tries to defy him, that sweet boy with lips like cherry wine and hands like the first day of spring, but she is always so weak. Nothing hurts when he has her in his arms and in this life, she makes him promise not to touch her ever again.

“Only this once.”

“Of course,” he smiles against her skin as her fingernails rake along his back.

“No, Bellamy. Promise me.”

But he silences her with his mouth on hers, swallowing the guttural moan she lets out because she is so weak for him and she never was for anyone else. Finn wanted to love her, grand gestures and talks of love that surpasses every god-made border, but he is nothing. He is nothing compared to Bellamy biting into her lower lip as if he wants to prove that he can be just as dark.

It’s not him and yet, every time he tries to be something he thinks she could love. What he doesn’t know is that she loves him like this, loves him any way she can get because he is hers and her blood chants his name.

She is a queen, she is a queen, and she repeats it in her mind until his fingers pull down the zipper of her dress and it pools around her feet like a puddle of blood. His eyes are wide, adoring and for that – she feels small.

Never did she ask for this power, for this eclipse. But it was given to her – the Underworld to rule over, as if she didn’t want to bask in the sun instead of standing in the shade.

He loves her for how vast the eternal night is and she wants him to love her for what she is – the small moments when she almost feels human.

His eyes, hands, lips roam over her body like he wants to take everything in but he pushes her into a wall and it feels so wrong to make this sweetness turn bitter.

They can have only one night, that much she can get them, but she won’t have him change to accommodate her darkness.

“No.”

He looks at her, careful and confused, hands still pressed on her thighs where she has them wrapped around his waist. It’s all heat and happiness, but she is too old for him to pretend like he is anything like her.

“Not like this, Bellamy. You always do this. But I don’t want you to change.”

When did she get this soft, when did her voice break with the weight of everything piled on top of her shoulders?

“You don’t have to do this. Just do what you really want to.”

And then the tenderness of his movements kills her. It destroys her and swallows her whole because this is the first time she told him that, and they don’t get that many firsts when they are as old as the history itself.

But this is the first time their movements are languid and slow, drawn-out, and the sheets unmistakably tangle around them but he smiles when he presses a kiss to her lower belly and feels her shiver under his touch.

She forgot the curve of his lips when he smiles, forgot everything about how his eyes light up and she doesn’t even blame the flowers for blooming. Not even she, the queen of the Underworld, could deny him anything.

“You’re such a princess, Clarke,” he tells her as they lay in bed afterwards, everything hazy and blurry around the edges but it’s warm and it’s red where it was only grey before.

She smacks him for teasing her and he only laughs again. That’s why she loved him, that’s why she loves him and that’s why she will always love him. With him, it was never too hard to forget about the screams piercing her eardrums and just laugh.

“Well I’m serious!” he protests, starting to mimic her voice. “Not like this, Bellamy. Yes, exactly like this, Bellamy. Oh God, don’t stop, Bellamy!“

He laughs harder when she smacks him again and she feels his chest vibrate with it where her face is pressed against it. His thumb is rubbing soothing patterns on her back and she loves the boy. She will always love the boy and she can’t even care if that had been decided for them or if they came to decide it for themselves.

They spend the night – the morning – the day, it’s all the same for them, in the bed, careless of the rest of the world. If she has one chance to be happy – she will use it and not care for anyone else.

They were doomed from the start but they can steal a few precious moments.

In the end, it is Clarke who brings it to an end. Her mind clears up and he knows what’s going on, frowning as soon as she moves away from him. His whole body tenses up and she can’t even look him in the eye anymore, knowing that he is aware of how happy she is with him and still is still pushing him away.

“We can’t do this again.”

“Clarke-“

“Please leave.”

She is cold, she is the queen of Underworld and what is one boy’s heart compared to a million of others’?

(A lot.)

(Too much.)

“Like hell I’ll leave!”

This is new for both of them. She never did this, never could find the strength to push him away just as it became good. The sheer force of his love always brought her to her knees and she crawled back to him, to the sun-filled fields and dark rooms of dark places, anywhere where they were alone in this world even if for a second.

This time she denies him, she rejects him and doesn’t want him. Clarke tells him just as much and feels his heart breaking. If she had a heart of her own, maybe it would break too. But she doesn’t.

“Fine,” he finally speaks, throwing away what little covers there were left on the bed and coming to stand in front of her. There is a million miles of his body and it always haunts her, the way it was once one with her own.

He stands in front of her, in all of his naked glory, and she doesn’t even look for anything beyond his face. The freckles are what kills her, the personification of happiness.

“You want to be miserable? Fine, be fucking miserable, Clarke. I have no idea why is it that you’re hell-bent on doing just that but have it your way.”

She watches him dress, quiet, unmoving and burning into the carpet she’s standing on. The voices of tortured souls are getting louder, clearer, begging for relief or mercy – nothing what she can give them. One day she’s going to find a way to quieten them without Bellamy – one day she won’t have to keep him in her world where he doesn’t belong and won’t have to see him suffer because he misses the dark soil and the smell of earth after the first rain in a long while.

“I will kill you if you eat the pomegranate on your way out!” she warns as he’s passing her and he grins into her face, nothing alluring about it now. It’s danger and every cell in her body shifts to accommodate the new sensation.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, _Princess_.”

He spits out the name like a curse and leaves, doors banging like a hurricane. She almost wishes there is glass that could be broken, if only to make a sound other than screams and what little scraps of heart she thought she didn’t have breaking.

 

* * *

 

 

Raven is the one who breaks the silence in the end, coming to find her in her club one fine summer evening Clarke can’t spend outside. Everyone says that the dead are prisoners but she is the real prisoner of her duties.

“You’re fucking stupid, you know that?”

Clarke glares at her and the mechanic – that’s what she likes to be called now – rolls her eyes. She supposes that they look young but they are as old as the world. Perhaps they could start acting like it.

“Get me that nice whiskey of yours and maybe I’ll elaborate.”

After two glasses, Raven leans her elbows on the bar and Clarke knows what she’s going to say but still lets her. In this life, she loves Raven more than she loves Finn and it’s a small victory but a victory nonetheless.

“He loves you, he’s a pretty good fuck and I just don’t see what’s stopping you from seeing him.”

“He doesn’t want to _see_ me, Raven. He wants to love me.”

“So let him,” the other goddess shrugs, unfazed. “If he wants to do it so badly.”

“And see him rot away in this prison?”

Raven smiles, incredulous. “You really don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“This is different. We are different, this time around. Why do you think I can stay away from Finn? Why do you think Bellamy has a sister? Why do you think we feel pain like we have never felt it before?”

Clarke freezes. A day would come, they knew, when they would lose all of their powers. Perhaps the world would end with a bang, or simply with a whimper. It would end one day. Or all of them would.

Strangely, death doesn’t feel like a nightmare anymore. It feels like freedom, a breath of fresh air Clarke has been craving since the day they assigned her the broken and the weary, the screams and curses.

“Oh yes, my dear Clarke,” Raven grins, sharp teeth and sharper wit. “The times they are a-changin’.”

 

* * *

 

 

It was only fitting that the two who have suffered the most bring it all to an end. He is the bringer of spring and she is the bringer of death but this time around no one suffers when they decide to change their destiny.

There is no more shouting as Bellamy grows unhappy with being isolated in her secluded kingdom, no more of his silence when she tells him that he can’t go back – not until spring. There is no more pain and anger, only fury boiling in their veins as they reject the roles they have rehearsed throughout the history – while empires fell and new were born amidst the old ones’ ashes.

This time, it is the two of them who dance in the ashes of an old world, as the dead return to Earth and as gods cry out in pain. Bellamy takes Clarke’s hand as she does the one thing she has been told not to do – bring all of those who scream and cry and beg _back_.

“Together.”

He smiles at her and there isn’t a thing she wouldn’t do to be free with him. The souls vanish into thin air, the club left empty save for the empty bottles rolling around the floor and Bellamy kicks them with glee, invites her to do the same.

“Say goodbye to this fucking prison!”

Clarke likes this Bellamy – he isn’t Persephone’s wordy bravado that fails when actions are concerned. He is brave and he is young, full of laughter and love, but he is the one who takes her hand and helps her defy the Olympians.

Together they step out into the sunlight and it is everything she’s ever dreamed of – only more. The colors are vibrant, not dimmed to black, but red and green and gold and blue – the skies are what blue should look like, white splatters across it. Birds chirping and people cheering, rejoined with their loved ones.

She was the queen of Underworld and now she is a human. Her heart beats so fast she hears the song of it in her ears and everything hurts like it never hurt before. But her soul hurts less and she may not be a goddess anymore but she is a living, breathing thing that can walk under blue skies and laugh.

Past can become the past. She’s lived for too long, millennia of doing nothing but torturing and enduring. This way they get fifty years – sixty at the most, but she’s seen humans and knows how much they can do in that little time.

The gods could only dream of loving and hating and living and _thriving_ like this. For all their immortality, she’d rather take freedom.

“What do we do now?” she finally asks him, watches the boy who is no longer a god smile at her like she is the only thing he wants out of this life.

Bellamy takes her by the hand, electricity and life coursing between them, and she knows that she loved him, loves him and will always love him when he speaks.

(They are humans but they are so much more than gods.)

“Whatever the hell we want.”

**Author's Note:**

> That's it! Thank you all for reading and if you liked it, please let me know - I get ridiculously excited when you guys leave even one line, it means a lot to me! 
> 
> I can also be reached at my [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com) if that's something you'd like to do. I'd love to talk to you all. And I promise I don't bite - I do cry a lot about fandoms, tho.


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